At 11:11 AM 7/10/2006, Ruth Sponsler wrote:
>I can easily find studies of
>other sorts of workers that have increased SMR
>compared to control populations - e.g. the lack of a
>'healthy worker effect.'
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Dear Ruth,
Although it is easy to see the possibility of confounding factors in the
non-radiation studies you cited, I have seen published radiation
epidemiology studies that seem to target "significant" findings and treat
possible confounding factors as virtually irrelevant, The most important
frequently ignored or mishandled confounder in radiation studies is tobacco
use. Of course, tobacco is an important carcinogen. Tobacco use is often
treated as if it is somehow perfectly corrected by the choice of the
controls (usually not). One published study based a "significant" finding
on cancer in four workers where two of the four had lung cancer. When I
asked the senior investigator if those two lung-cancer cases were smokers,
he said he did not know! Another study looked at the incidence of many
different types of human cancer (I guess there are at least 40 types),
found one to be significantly increased in radiation workers, and published
a paper proclaiming radiation workers got that one type of cancer from
radiation exposures.
Otto
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Prof. Otto G. Raabe, Ph.D., CHP
Center for Health & the Environment
University of California
One Shields Avenue
Davis, CA 95616
E-Mail: ograabe at ucdavis.edu
Phone: (530) 752-7754 FAX: (530) 758-6140
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